When it comes to oil and pipelines these days, leaks seem to be inevitable.

Not so much actual oil leaks but leaks from government that are designed to bamboozle U.S opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline into believing that Canada is serious about reducing the greenhouse gases churned out during production of the oil running through the pipeline.

Harper desperately needs U.S approval if he is to satisfy his economic objectives because the $5.3-billion pipeline proposed by TransCanada would wend its way from Alberta through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska and then link up with lines that would deliver oil to refineries on the Texas gulf coast.

U.S environmentalists are loudly and vigorously opposed to the project. For them it’s become a potent symbol of everything that’s wrong with oilsands development. And there is no question that approval of Keystone XL would not only provide easier passage for the tarry bitumen from the oilsands but would encourage further development.

Obama has not been exactly warm to the idea. He’s stalled on a final decision for so long that no one seems certain when it will be made. Each delay causes the oil industry to hit the panic button as it tries to figure out how to get oil to market.

So it’s not happenstance that during the recent G20 meetings Harper suddenly informed Obama (and anyone else who is opposed to the pipeline) that despite ignoring the issue for years, he really is concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on climate change.

What he is prepared to do about it is another question.

No doubt he figures that by simply floating the idea he will pacify opponents into believing that he will soon follow through with actual policy and regulations.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford did the same thing last April just before she went to Washington DC to try and convince legislators and decision-makers to give Keystone XL the green light. On the eve of her departure, word leaked out that government and oil industry representatives were discussing an increase in Alberta’s carbon emission taxes that would see them more than double.

That would have been a bold move.

But so far it has amounted to nothing more than talk, talk designed to replace actual policy and regulations.

Harper seems to be playing the same game.

Neither of them seems to realize how intense the opposition to the pipeline and the tarry oil it will carry actually is and the impact that will have on political decisions in the U.S.

I got a taste of it when I was in San Francisco in June. My daughter and I were enjoying a boat tour of the bay that took us under the Golden Gate Bridge. When we got close to the bridge we could see that it was full of hundreds of people marching, chanting, and sporting signs that read: “Stop the Keystone XL.” I found out later that most of them were registered nurses who had come to protest the health impacts of tarsands oil.

At the same time, a plane flew overhead trailing a banner that also read: “Stop the Keystone XL.” And then a sail boat swept by with the same message.

All of a sudden I felt like the “ugly Canadian.” In Alberta we are not used to in-your-face protest against our oil industry. So it’s easy to believe that it’s just something that happens on TV.

But it’s real all right, and if Harper and Redford want Keystone XL to proceed, they should actually do something about it rather than just talk the talk.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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